Bullying’s Steep Price

Bullying costs California schools hundreds of millions of dollars a year in lost funding, suggests an analysis in School Psychology Quarterly. That’s because many states, including California, allocate funding based on average attendance numbers, not enrollment–so when students miss class, schools lose money. The researchers analyzed data from the 2011-13 California Healthy Kids Survey and from the states department of education. They found that 10.4 percent of students had missed at least one school day in that past month because they felt unsafe. In addition, they found that almost half of those students felt unsafe because they were bullied for their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability. That rate of absenteeism equaled $276 million in lost funding, the researchers calculated.